Boulder is a magnet not only for those looking to raise a family, build a career or revel in the myriad recreational opportunities the benign climate and beautiful landscape afford. It's also a strong draw for those just looking to survive.

And for those with that most basic motivation, it is seen as hospitable turf.

"If you go hungry in Boulder, there's something wrong," said Susan Dragon-Porter, a 45-year-old homeless woman, as she sat by Boulder Creek on a recent morning.

"There's basically a bunch of places you can go to get help," said Dragon-Porter.

She ticked off Bridge House, the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, Emergency Family Assistance and the Harvest of Hope Pantry, run by the Catholic parishes of Boulder.

Maximillian Blackfox, 52, said he got "the travelling fever" after completing four years in the Army, and has been on the streets more often than not since 1984. He spoke as if being without a roof over his head in Boulder was easy street.

"I've been all over the country," he said, standing outside Bridge House, a Boulder-based homeless services center. "I've been in North Dakota when it was 20 or 30 degrees below zero. This is nothing."

Ryan Scheevel, a Boulder police officer assigned to the area encompassing Pearl Street, the municipal campus and Central Park, said, "A lot of the people who are coming into Boulder from out of state, the first time I contact them, I'll ask them where they came from and why they chose to come up to Boulder.

"And a lot of them will tell me that in the transient community throughout the U.S., Boulder is known as a good place for homeless or transient people to come to."

Asked whether he saw that as a good or bad thing, Scheevel professed not to have a stance, either way.

However, he said, "For the people who want help or are seeking help, I think Boulder has a lot of good resources. In that sense, I think it's good for people who are seeking help, to get up on their feet and off the streets."

'Giving them more opportunities'

Steven McMillian, a 34-year-old homeless man, agreed.

""They offer a hand up, not a hand out," said McMillian, who was a friend of Kathryn Fishman, the most recent transient to die on Boulder's streets. "I think Boulder is doing a good job in helping people struggling and in need, but I don't think it's causing an epidemic of people looking for a hand out, not a hand up."

Isabel McDevitt, executive director of Bridge House, has a more tempered assessment on that score.

"There's hundreds of people in Boulder who have been homeless for a long time who are doing everything they can to try to move out of homelessness and that is the group of people who we could be doing a better job with, and giving them more opportunities," McDevitt said. "And that's what I focus on and that's what my agency focuses on."

She understands the need to deal with behavioral issues through updating city ordinances, and to provide safe places to sleep out of the elements.

However, McDevitt said, "Boulder has been pretty focused on emergency services, rather than services where people can get the tools to address the causes of their homelessness, and the real tools that give access to employment, and stabilizing services like mental health care, substance abuse treatment, that are really going to help address the root causes of their homelessness."

'People who are broken'

Allan Graham, a retired physician on the Bridge House board of directors, also believes the city can do much more to help people like Fishman, a 59-year-old woman who was found dead at Scott Carpenter Park the morning of Mother's Day.

"We need to come to understand these people as people who are broken," Graham said.

"I think she is a very good example. All these people I have met have been broken in ways that never should have happened," he said.

"And these people have personalities, and until we know them as persons, we're going to treat them like some abstract problem and we're going to try to dispose of them as a problem that clutters our parks, rather than people who have been hurt or injured."

Boulder City Council members at a meeting last week said the city should find ways to invest its human services dollars with a goal of making a dent in homelessness, while at the same time avoiding making Boulder a magnet for more transients to come here.

At that meeting, Mayor Matt Appelbaum contended that the city provides some aid both through its affordable housing programs, and medical care for the indigent. But Appelbaum and other council members also said other area communities need to increase their services to the homeless as well.

Considering the challenge of turning around such a diverse population — with only its members' high degree of need as a common thread — McDevitt confessed, "It is kind of mind-blowing, and I don't think anyone would say we have enough of what we need to make the impact that we could."

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